The telegraph station we built out of paper milk cartons, wire-wrapped nails and flashlight batteries in my 6th grade science class back in 1975 taught us about principles of electricity and communication – not about fleecing taxpayers with politically-charged corporate welfare.
But that’s the youth indoctrination effort pitched each year by the Kansas Corporation Commission with its “KidWind Challenge.” This nationwide propaganda program is sponsored by all the heavy hitters of Green Energy, which the KCC dutifully promotes to public schools across the state in an effort to help Big Green make unquestioning lackies out of Kansas school children.
The KCC picked up a cool $65,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Indoctrination– I mean–Energy to run KidWind this year. That may seem like a lot of clams for a school project competition, but it does keep KCC in the company of mega-buck federal tax credit addicts like EDP Renewables and Dominion Energy who’ve been tapping taxpayers for decades now. With publicly-funded tuition making Green Soldiers out of Kansas school kids for the Renewable Energy Industry, just think of it as your tax dollars making Moonies out of your kids.
As if that’ll make it easier to swallow.
INDUSTRY UNDERSTIMATES THE TRUE COSTS, THREATS OF WIND TURBINE FIRES
So while KCC and these other green energy pimps sugar coat wind energy like the Victory Gardens of World War II that will defeat fossil fuel tyranny, the other half of Kansas which opposes this government dependent, equity destroying, landscape ravaging debacle are left with less tax money and a whole class of youth that will need deprogramming by heavy doses of scientific reality.
The basics of KidWind is pretty simple but it’s the irony of the “challenge” that makes it as silly as the actually industry it coddles. In a nutshell, kids make a toy wind turbine and they test it to see how well it does – in a wind tunnel… a wind tunnel that itself is powered by… wait for it… fossil fuel produced electricity from whatever gas or coal plant services the testing site.
That’s a point that’s not brought up during the challenge – presumably because it might raise too many challenging questions. Even Moonies can be darned inquisitive.
And those questions abound. KidWind’s rules and operational plans don’t discuss the political division wind farms bring to rural communities that value the pristine landscapes and skylines that really put the “country” in “the country.” Nor do they discuss how a scheme of federal tax credits to Big Business operations that promote wind are really the only reasons wind farms exist to begin with.
And because they do and they’re so expensive to build and operate, mom and dad’s utility company hits state regulators up for a rate increase about every two or three years.
Also forgotten are the basics of the wind farm fairy tale – that somehow we can replace “always-on” electrical generation powered by nuke, coal or natural gas with “sometimes-on” wind farms that only produce power when the wind blows. The practical effect? That any wind power we might depend on better be backed up by dependable production – unless you’re willing to tolerate a power system that only works when the wind blows.
Of course the wind industry has that one solved: The wind’s got to be blowing somewhere, so just build wind farms everywhere, as long as Uncle Sam’s footing enough of the bill.
That pulse on, pulse off nature of wind turbine fields connected to the regional power grid is also a real treat for the engineers and technicians who are trying to run that grid with the idea of keeping it consistent across broad segments of the country. Imagine a non-stop game of wack-a-mole across a massive electrical grid every time the weather pattern changes.
The parents of the KidWinders might have a different perspective from the KCC and the big money wind companies. All across Eastern Kansas and in some other counties as well, adults who are a little less starry-eyed about pie-in-the sky causes are stopping wind farm developments in their tracks. It happened here in Anderson County, Linn County, most recently in Franklin and Osage counties and even out in Reno County. People who live in the country because they love it don’t want to live in the middle of a 30,000 acre power plant that only works when there’s a blowing wind and a federal tax subsidy – and literally has to be plugged in to outside electricity in order to operate.
It’s a tough conversation to have – like explaining to your kids the reality about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or why you can’t make Frosted Flakes a regular part of your diet. But kids these days who are being targeted by the false virtue of green energy and by the governmental hacks like the KCC coccling those industries need your insight.
The KCC won’t tell your kids the truth – that’s going to be up to you.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
